LOVING YOU WAS MY UNDOING

This simplistic though appealing combination of rousing adventure and tragic love story, which takes place during the Mexican Revolution, was first published in Spanish in 1991. It’s the story of rebel general Valentino Cobelo’s passion for the beautiful widow of a scholarly notary public who was one of the Revolution’s first martyrs. The only thing, however, that lifts this novel above mediocrity is Gonzalez-Rubio’s deft analysis of the suffocating traditional mores that shape his characters inexorably, and foreordain their story’s sweeping (it’s really the only appropriate word) romantic conclusion.